


home for the volidays

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But Fluffy Holiday Content, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, M/M, Not Christmas, Team as Family, holiday fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 11:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17141120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: When Team Voltron had first gone their separate ways after the war, there had been one pressing question:“When do we all meet up next?”alternatively: a glimpse into team voltron's yearly holiday meetup





	home for the volidays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flashedarrow (kittymills)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymills/gifts), [copilotsheith (arcadenemesis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadenemesis/gifts), [cherryburlesque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryburlesque/gifts).



> This is a bit choppy but I hope you like it!

When Team Voltron had first gone their separate ways after the war, there had been one pressing question:

“When do we all meet up next?”

Lance had thrown it as they sat discussing their post-war plans to rebuild and stabilise the universe, much to Keith's surprise. Throwing them for a loop, it had taken some time to figure out, firstly, where everyone would be and when. After all, pencilling in a calendar became hard when they would be all over the universe doing who knows what. And when they’d sorted that out, it became a question of _when_ they would take time out of their schedules to meet up.

“I mean, we’ll be very busy the first few years,” Pidge had reasoned while Keith nodded in agreement, “maybe it’s best if we left it to just phone calls for now?”

“Nope,” responded Lance almost immediately. “Nope. We’ll put it off over and over again because we’re “busy”, and then the calls will come less often until next thing you know, we only see each other during universe-altering events and haven’t been in the same room for years. Nope, we’re a family, and if there’s one thing I know about family, it’s that meet up time is compulsory, so when should it be?”

As everyone remained quiet, Lance blundered on.

“I was thinking around Christmas time, except then I realised my mum would never forgive me if I missed another Christmas in my life, so maybe not?”

To a warning glare from Keith, Shiro had piped up then, “Not everyone celebrates Christmas.”

“So Christmas is out?” Lance grinned. “Progress. So how about we set the date tentatively for about three weeks before Christmas?”

Almost reluctantly, heads around the room nodded. It wasn’t as if they didn’t want to spend time together, on the contrary. But after the defeat of Haggar, the tentative peace that settled across the universe was just that – _tentative_ – and, for Team Voltron, the blood, sweat, and tears made stabilising it all the more important. To some – Pidge, Keith, even Shiro had his doubts – the need to meet up was far less important that the work they would be doing.

“It’ll be good for us,” Shiro had told Keith as they hunkered down in their blankets for the night. Keith’s _hmph_ of let’s see echoed Shiro’s general attitude.

And it was the same attitude they had when, months later, Lance bashed down their door demanding their presence at the so-dubbed Volidays. Hardly an easy feat considering that they’d been undercover for a month and their safe house was so secure not even Krolia had been able to break in.

“You agreed!” he accused them while shoving clothes into their suitcases. For them. As he’d done for the other paladins before them. “We all agreed on the Volidays starting a week ago and _none_ of you turned up! This is family! You turn up to family things!”

Keith and Shiro had only exchanged glances before folding, joining the other disgruntled paladins and co. for three weeks of fun, festivities, and family activities.

The thing about the Volidays, though, was that after the first time, they all silently agreed to continue it. Three weeks of team bonding and fun became _their thing_ , one that they stolidly stuck to no matter what was happening in their lives. Sure, sometimes there were extenuating circumstances and they had to celebrate the Volidays while rescuing civilians from any number of evil creatures and things (including, once, a volcano), but the point of the stupid tradition was that they were together, as a family, for a guaranteed amount of time. And so, it became a _thing_ that they did as a _family_.

For Keith, who hadn’t had a family since his dad had died, the idea had been overwhelming. Really, truly, overwhelming. It was one thing to do stuff with Shiro’s cousins and his mum every so often, little superstitions and so that he’d felt honoured to participate in all the while feeling like a bit of an outsider. It was a whole other thing to be on the inside and an actual active participant _creating_ those traditions as if he was actually a family member. And so while he enjoyed the Volidays immensely, it took years before it found grip in his heart.

Once it did, though, he could never be swayed. Hard it became for the others to tell who was more hardcore about the Volidays, Lance or Keith, and their competitive natures made it all the harder. All Keith knew was that while it meant a lot to Lance, it was certainly something extra special for the orphan loner from the desert. It was a time to look forward to seeing family, and that would always be most important to Keith.

Or, almost the most important. When his daughter is born, and his son years after, he starts to see it. The building of not only a _thing_ that Team Voltron did, but a _tradition_ they shared with their children. One that they’d have even when he and Shiro were gone and dust. Something he hadn’t managed to have, and he didn’t blame his parents for it, he truly didn’t, but it was something he’d never had that he wanted his children to.

Even when they were being brats.

“Akira, Cora, if you don’t get down from the cabinet right now I’m going to make you get up at 5 A.M. every day for the next three weeks to run training drills.”

Almost as quickly as they’d scampered up, two pairs of feet hit the floor and they dash away, the fear of Keith certainly following through on his threat chasing them. Keith _hmph_ s, a sound closer to an amused chuckle than a grunt, and turns back to the kitchen bench.

As is the case for many years, a random draw allots the distinct honour of making the sugar cookies and that year Keith is the unlucky victim. Despite Hunk being the only one of the paladins with any cooking talented, they’d all agreed some time ago that it was unfair to force Hunk to make _everything_ , and thus the yearly draw commenced. And so: the sugar cookies of the last day are left to him.

Keith has been on making the sugar cookies three times in the past twenty-odd years (six, if you include Shiro’s disastrous attempts and he does), and yet, making the cookies never gets any easier. Without help, that is.

As if summoned by his thoughts, his daughter enters the room, a whirlwind of dark hair and pretentious goth clothes that takes one look at his pitiful attempt at cookies and shoos him out of the kitchen. Or tries to, at least. He has no reason to doubt her abilities – after all, she learnt from her uncle, so she’s a fine hand in the kitchen – but like he’s learnt from the Volidays, it’s the time spent with loved ones that is important, not the actual doing of things.

“If you’re going to stay, make yourself useful,” she commands him, and he salutes her lazily before getting out fresh pans. “Flour.”

He obliges, and together they dust their hands and get to it. They work like that for what feels like hours, Yumi directing him and he following her orders. It’s calming and though it's baking, which he’s lousy at best at, he’s content.

“What’s this?” Lance asks as he sweeps into the kitchen to find the cooling cookies laid out on the benches. He goes to swipe one, only to retract his hand as Keith hits him with the spatula. “Ow!”

“Serves you right,” says Yumi, poking her tongue out. “Those are to go with the present giving for tonight.”

Lance rubs the back of his hand, mouth curling like a petulant teenager as he whines, “There’s more than enough!”

“Are you filching cookies?” a voice rings from the kitchen door. Lance winces.

In all her pale-haired, finely-clothed glory, Allura breezes into the room. Even heavily pregnant as she is, she hardly looks to have any trouble with walking, her gait unchanged even in her last trimester. From the way she glares at her husband, she doesn’t have any trouble with that either.

“You’ll get a stomach ache,” she chastises. “And how are we to set an example for the children if you’re sneaking in to steal the same cookies they’ll be after later?”

“Fine,” Lance pouts, though anyone can see its put on from a mile away. “Later.”

“Later,” Allura agrees.

Twin chuckles sound from the door, and Keith’s husband shuffles in with Hunk by his side. Both are in their swim trunks, chests bare and glistening. The towels around their waists fail to stop the dripping of pool water on the floor, but they don’t seem to notice as they make their way to the counter and put on their shirts.

“Were you responsible for these?” Hunk asks Keith. He nods down at the cookies with an expression akin to appreciation. “They look good.”

“Yep,” Keith says at the same time Yumi says, “No.”

They stare each other down, then exclaim simultaneously, “I MADE THEM!”

“Wow, Keith, good parenting,” Hunk deadpans, then picks up a cookie and bites into it. He moans, face lighting up in delight as he says through a mouthful of cookie, “No’ I ’no yew did’t make ’em, so goo’.”

With a sigh, Keith raises his hands in surrender and withdraws from the bench to his husband’s side. Shiro grins down at him, a mischievous thing that hasn’t changed since they were teenagers, and pulls him into his side with his bionic arm. Together they watch as their daughter rambles, much to her uncle’s praise, about the cookies she’d put together.

There’s a warmth to it, he thinks as Hunk and Yumi discuss sugar quantities. A kind of comfort in that moment. It’s how he feels most of the time during the Volidays, though he’d never admit it out loud.

Somehow, though, he doesn’t have to. The others just know.

“I think it’s time for the present giving, don’t you think?” Allura announces. She goes to pick up a tray of sugar cookies only to be thwarted by Lance poaching the tray with lightning fast reflexes. “Lance! I’m pregnant, not an invalid!”

“Rest up, ’Lura,” Shiro says, leaving Keith’s side to sling an arm around the Altean’s shoulders. “Let the husbands do the work for once.”

Keith can’t help his eye roll but does as he’s bid, joining Hunk and Lance to help with carrying the cookies into the main room. The rest of dinner is set out on cushions in the already-built pillow fort – and it truly is a fort, blankets arching overhead, mattresses covering each inch of the floor, a thing of majesty – with presents piled up next to it and Coran playing supervisor. Considering the children and Pidge bouncing off the walls, it’s a necessary position.

“Ah, there you are!” As if sensing the presence of sugar cookies, Romelle sweeps in, the bells the children had braided into her hair jingling as she walked. “Excellent, is it time for the present giving?”

“Dinner first,” Keith says to a chorus of groans. “Nope. Dinner.”

And like all things with Team Voltron, dinner is just as fun an affair as anything else. Coran tells wistful stories of his time as Team Chef while the paladins gag at the memory. Pidge makes the mashed potatoes explode. At one point, it looks as if the whole thing will devolve into a food fight, but it’s defused with a couple of choice words from Shiro. All in all, everyone gets fed and has a laugh about it.

Later, stomach fit to burst with the pressure of too much food, Keith leans back into his husband’s chest to watch the presents lose their wrappings at the hands of all-too-eager fingers. Cora and Akira, always a troublesome pair when together, run around with the walkie-talkies Pidge had fashioned for them, shouting and screaming as they go. Their oldest is almost no better, taking far too much delight in showing off the potato gun Lance had made for her, and Lance and Allura’s youngest daughter babbles loudly as she waves around a toy from her Papa Coran. Keith sighs and Shiro nuzzles his hair.

He could never have imagined this future. Not when he’d first become orphaned, and certainly not when Lance first asked that fated question. Such a thing was far from his greatest hopes and desires, never once featuring in his prayers.

And yet, somehow, Keith had gotten all he could ever wish for.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://damnspacebois.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/damnspacebois) or [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/F2F2GQV4)!


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